"The NSA is not the only agency specializing in surveillance. State government health officials are profiling children and cataloging citizens in massive government databases without the patient's or parent's consent. That's the gist of our new 50-state report, released last week:"Patient Privacy and Public Trust: How Health Surveillance Systems are Undermining Both."

ST. PAUL, Minn.— For the past eight years, Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom has been researching health departments in all 50 states to find out how they use funding from the federal government to obtain and store citizens’ private medical information—in most cases, without patients’ consent.

Today, Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom is releasing the findings of one of its most important works to date. For the past eight years, CCHF has been researching health departments in all 50 states to find out how they use funding from the federal government to obtain and store citizens’ private medical information—in most cases, without patients’ consent.

CCHF has release a new Policy Insights Report: "Patient Privacy and Public Trust: How Health Surveillance Systems Are Undermining Both" Written by Twila Brase, President of CCHF, it reveals the scope and hidden nature of state government health surveillance systems. Using a variety of methods over eight years, CCHF gathered data from all 50 states and D.C. on four major government patient-tracking systems. This data has now been published by CCHF to alert the public to government surveillance and to urge state legislative action to protect individual privacy and consent rights.

As reported by Bloomberg/BNA's Health IT Law and Industry Report (10/29/12), Tom Frieden, director of the CDC wasnts doctors and hospitals to use EMRs to "track and refer tobacco users to public hotlines that offer support to patients working to quit smoking." In Stage 2 of "meaningful use" (MU), doctors and hospitals receive incentive payments if they record the smoking status of more than 80 percent of all patients 13 years or older. Patients may of course refuse to answer the questions or assist in the data collection. The CDC letter also suggests that EHRs should "automatically retrieve information from immunization registries." Click to read the CDC's letter.

No one who is under mandatory government surveillance is free. Privacy is quintessential to freedom. If we wish to preserve the freedom that has made our nation great and has beckoned people from every nation who have been persecuted and pursued by their own governments, then we must not strive to emulate the countries which they, and many of our forefathers, left.